An Operating System or OS is a kind of system software that controls and coordinates the overall operation of the computer.
It is responsible for the various activities of the computer system. It Controls the computer hardware, controls the execution of application programs and provides the set of services to the users.
The Operating System is on disk but has to be loaded on memory (RAM) once the computer is switched on and before any program can be run on. It is automatically loaded as soon as we turn on the computer.
Examples include Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX, Mac OS, etc.
Basic Functions Of Operating System
Every Computer has Operating System and none of the computers can run without it. OS has different functions to be performed Managing Resources Operating System coordinates with all the computer resources including the keyboard, Mouse, Memory etc.
Providing a User Interface All Operating System today provide a Windows Graphical User Interface ( GUI ) in which graphics objects called icons are used to represent commonly used features.
Running Applications Some operating system support multitasking, or the ability to run more than one application and loads it into the primary memory RAM of the computer.
Control The Computer Hardware The BIOS controls the hardware than the computer system. All program that needs hardware resources must go through the operating system.
File Management An operating system can only help to manage your files better. The operating system helps users to maintain their files different categorize wise and help them to sort their files and filter and many more.
Scheduling The task of handling how active processes are making efficient use of the CPU processing cycles is called scheduling. There are many ways of doing this, which is covered in another mini-website.
Memory Management The operating system has to make sure that applications are able to run in the amount of memory available and that they do not interfere with one another. There is a separate mini-website on this topic.
Data and user security All the user has to be authenticated with some specific username and password. The username and password can protect from unauthorized access. The operating system is one of the essential things to secure the data and information on a computer.
Handling Network CommunicationWithout operating there will be no communication on the computer. An operating system has some sort of rules and physical address to communicate, Data packets travelling to and from the connected computers on the network are handled by the operating system.
Types Of Operating System
Single User Operating System: This Operating system is designed for the computer so that one user can effectively use a computer at a time.
Multi-User Operating System: This Operating system allows many different users to take advantage of the computer resources simultaneously. A multi-user operating system has two different types of operating systems. Those are classified as their user interface.
CLI (Command Line Interface) the best example of the command line user interface is MS-Dos which is known as Microsoft Disk operating system.
Graphical User Interface ( GUI ) based operating system which we are using currently as Windows, Unix, Linux, Mac etc… In this operating system, we will get the graphical interface to operate and give the instructions.
